The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (6 page)

When it said that an unsolved case like this was being handled by a lone officer, that usually meant the officer in question was responsible for keeping the file updated with any new evidence which might, but rarely did, come in, and that he was expected to get the file out occasionally and blow off the cobwebs, see if anything had been missed previously; also to call the various witnesses and relatives to give the impression that something was being done. But to all intents it meant the investigation was closed and police didn’t expect to make further progress. Still, there was something about this one that made me want to know more.

The deaths of five other prostitutes in the same time period took me less time to get through. They didn’t seem relevant to any investigation into Mary Lynch’s murder.

One had fallen from the bridge, knocked her head and drowned in the canal. Autopsy showed excess alcohol and the presence of four different stimulant narcotics, including LSD and Ecstasy. Two had overdosed in the same crack house off the South Circular Road, not far from where Mary had lived, four months apart, but each was considered a clear case of accidental death. Another had suffocated on a plastic supermarket bag filled with glue. It would’ve been put down as accidental too had she not left a suicide note. The last to die had been knocked down and killed not far from the city centre at the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Merrion Square. Eight women, eight dead women, just names now, eight women reduced to ghosts in the pages of a few meagre case reports. And only remembered now because Mary Lynch had gone into the darkness to join them.

It was only when I laid Monica Lee’s photograph on the table, wanting on a sudden impulse to check if she looked anything like the picture I’d seen of Mary Lynch in the
Post
, whether that might be a connection, that I realised it was getting dark already.

Out the window, lights were coming on over the city. The sky was streaked with black clouds. More rain. I checked the time. Four thirty. Fisher hadn’t called back, and Mort Tillman certainly hadn’t been in touch. I wondered if Fisher had managed to speak to Tillman yet, and if he had, why he hadn’t called to tell me. I rang Fisher’s number in London again but there was no answer.

What time was Tillman’s seminar?

Four o’clock, wasn’t it?

I could be down there before it was over if I hurried. And once that thought was planted in my head, there was no uprooting it.

What I had left of good sense told me I should wait till I heard from Fisher – but I told what I had left of good sense to go to hell.

Chapter Seven

Trinity College rose above the traffic that flowed round its base like an ancient sacred rock out of some fast-flowing dirty river, seemingly untouched by the surrounding noise and chaos. It had been here for over four hundred years and it wasn’t looking bad for its age.

Certainly better than I did for mine most days.

I walked through tall gates into the cobbled courtyard within.

On the far side, a queue of tourists still waited, late as it was, to get into the library to see the Book of Kells, an eighth-century illuminated manuscript in Latin, stolen from Scotland, some said, by Irish monks and which the Irish showed few signs of handing back. And why should they? It was obviously doing good business, though I’d never been to see it myself. I was waiting for the paperback to come out.

It didn’t take long to find the Psychology building, nor, once inside, to climb the stairs and find the room I was looking for; but once there, my nerve almost failed me. The door had one of those glass panels in it patterned with squares, like the sort of paper on which children do their math homework, and through it I could see Mort Tillman sitting by the window, head framed by darkening sky, legs crossed, hands folded, listening intently as one of the students, an anxious, fidgety young man in John Lennon glasses, made some point.

Mort looked just as I remembered, with that same air of distracted, shabby grandeur, that same seemingly permanent frown, above all that same inexplicable fondness for overlarge grey corduroys and bright waistcoats, the latter his one concession to style. It was as though he’d once seen a 1940s print showing a caricature of the standard eccentric college professor and the image had become imprinted in his head, unerasable except by invasive surgery.

His hair was still too long for a man of his age as well, though closer to grey now than the silver he always used to be so proud of, and the goatee looked rather worn. He was the middle son of a grand New England family of attorneys who’d expected better of him and made sure he never forgot it. Grandfather in the Senate; summer house on Martha’s Vineyard; winter ski lodge in Vermont – why wouldn’t they have expected better? Tillman had courage in his own way to defy them. It was just a pity that he couldn’t have defied them that bit more by not sharing their own assessment of his shortcomings.

A glance up from Tillman showed that he’d seen me as I pushed open the door and entered as unobtrusively as I could manage, but if he was surprised by my appearance he wasn’t showing it. Did that mean Fisher had managed to contact him? Or had he been expecting me to come round ever since he arrived in Dublin?

A couple of other people near the back of the room looked up too, but most of the other twenty or so students who’d turned up for Tillman’s seminar were too engrossed in the dialogue that was going on between him and the fidgety young student to take any notice of me.

Theirs was an argument I’d heard many times before. If something was acidic, the relevant test would always show it to be acidic; it couldn’t be mistaken for, or pretend to be, anything else. But if an actual or potential offender knew the parameters of a profiler’s tests, he could subtly change his own behaviour to buck the test, escaping detection to carry on killing.

‘You can even download VICAP forms from the Internet now,’ the student insisted, referring to the FBI’s Violent Crime and Apprehension Program analysis reports. ‘I’ve done it myself. You know what the police are looking for. And once you know, you can beat it.’

‘In theory, maybe,’ Tillman said when he got the chance. ‘I’ve never claimed that profiling is faultless, I’ve never even used the word science. Offender profiling is a technique, that’s all, an application of psychological principles to the realm of criminology. It’s still up to the police to determine how to use the application of those principles in the solving of a crime.’

‘But how can they apply the principles at all if the principles can’t be relied on?’

‘It’s more complex than that, Tim,’ Tillman replied. ‘An offender may know the principles involved, but he still won’t alter his behaviour in the most part because what he’s doing has its own compulsion. He is working out, usually, an elaborate ritualistic fantasy of his own, perfecting it each time to make it right. Not only is it not possible for him to change his behaviour, he also wouldn’t want to because that wouldn’t satisfy the urge.’

‘But he could, if he chose to.’

‘Sure he could, if he wanted to make an abstract academic point about profiling,’ Tillman agreed. ‘But most murderers aren’t interested in playing those sorts of fussy intellectual games. They’re obeying a more primitive instinct. You can’t get away from sex.’

‘Tim manages it most weekends,’ another student piped up.

Everyone laughed, though Tim didn’t even seem to have heard the mocking. He was listening too intently as Tillman continued.

‘Even if our hypothetical murderer wanted to buck the profile,’ Tillman said, ‘every contact leaves a trace. Every physical contact leaves a trace – that’s the principle of forensics. But every contact leaves a psychological trace too. We may only be at the start of finding out how to interpret that trace, but we need to keep at it. Even if it’s only knowing if the killer was in a hurry, if there was excess violence, whether he’s organised or disorganised. It all adds up to building a rounder picture of the offender. We can’t hide the way we are in our actions. We can change aspects, but how we behave still has an inner logic of its own that can be mapped.’

Tim shrugged, unconvinced.

‘Don’t just take my word for it. Ask Saxon here.’

He nodded at me, and twenty heads turned in my direction.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

‘Saxon,’ Tillman said, ‘is an FBI agent.’

‘Former FBI agent,’ I corrected.

‘Clarice Starling or Dana Scully?’ asked someone with a laugh. The same class wit who’d wound up Tim.

‘Nowhere near as effective as either, sadly,’ I said. ‘That’s why I left.’

‘And why she now writes books. She was working on a book about our friend Ed Fagan when he went missing. The one the local newspapers tell us is up to his old tricks again.’

There were a few nods from people who obviously recognised who I was. A look of embarrassment on a few other faces too, as those who’d bothered to read up about their guest lecturer realised his uneasy relationship with me.

‘Are you helping to catch him?’ one girl asked.

‘As I said, I don’t work in law enforcement any more.’

‘You’re not here to ask Dr Tillman’s help then?’ she said; but before I could think of a noncommittal answer, a bell sounded outside in the courtyard for five o’clock, and Tillman rose to his feet with what seemed very much like relief.

‘Time’s up,’ he said, and he started gathering his papers together into a briefcase as the students filed reluctantly out.

He waited till the last one had gone before speaking.

‘I have a meeting,’ he said then.

‘This won’t take long,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk you there.’

He considered it, then nodded, though with little enthusiasm.

‘Interesting bunch of students you have,’ I said as he showed me out and we set off down the corridor, Tillman greeting people occasionally as they passed. He seemed to have become pretty well known in his first couple of weeks in Dublin.

‘Bright kids,’ he agreed. ‘This is a new ballgame for them. The college has only invited me here for a few months to see what interest there is in classes on criminal psychology. So far, it’s going well. They’re learning quickly.’

‘Like Tim.’

‘Tim’s got a first-rate mind,’ he said. He didn’t elaborate.

‘I was surprised to hear you were in town at all,’ I tried again. ‘Small world. You should’ve called me.’

‘Why?’

‘We could’ve had dinner. A drink.’

‘For old times’ sake?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You’ve had better ideas,’ he said.

‘You’re still mad with me about my book.’

‘I’m not mad,’ said Tillman. ‘I got over it. It just changed our relationship, that’s all. I don’t think it’s going to be root beer and potato chips for us from now on, you know?’ His sarcasm made root beer and potato chips sound like an offensive suggestion. ‘But that’s no reason why we can’t keep things professional. Like now. You wanted to see me. Why?’

‘I need a profile of the man who killed Mary Lynch,’ I said.

No answer.

‘Did you hear me? I said I need a profile.’

‘I hear you,’ said Tillman. ‘Loud and clear.’ He stopped walking abruptly, and looked at me. There were tufts of grey flowering in his eyebrows too these days, I saw. ‘What is it? Am I a charity case now? No, don’t bother answering that. Like I told Lawrence Fisher when he called earlier with the same message, if you need a profile ask a profiler.’

‘That’s what I’m doing.’

‘Correction, Saxon. You’re asking an ex-profiler, just like you’re ex-FBI. At least that’s what you told my students in there. I stopped doing individual cases three, four years ago.’

‘You worked an abduction case for the police in Paris last year, I read about it in the newspapers. Some college student had been reporting a stalker for three months, then went missing shortly before her finals. They came to you for help.’

‘They came to me because I was the only FBI-trained profiler who could speak French. The French police didn’t want the extra expense of an interpreter,’ Tillman said. ‘If you know so much about it, you should also know that it failed.’

‘It didn’t fail. The profile you drew up was a ninety per cent match for the man now doing time in prison.’

‘The girl was found trussed up like a caterpillar and suffocated with her own underpants. That’s a failure in my book.’

‘You were hired to do a profile. You did a good profile. It wasn’t your job to stop the girl from dying.’

He started walking again, down the stairs and out into the courtyard.

‘You didn’t think so in Paul Nado’s case,’ he said without breaking step.

That threw me.

‘I never said you should’ve caught Nado,’ I replied. ‘You were overworked. You were under pressure. You missed things. Strong hints of familiarity between him and the first victim, for one thing, possible staging of the scenes. We all did.’

‘Clear signs that, if spotted and acted upon, could have prevented other victims dying. As your book made plain.’

‘I had to be honest when I wrote it.’

‘You didn’t have to write it at all.’

I had no answer to that. He was right. The world could have managed quite well without another book on serial killing.

‘Look,’ said Tillman, ‘can we change the subject? I told you, I don’t do profiles any more. I mean it. Get someone else.’

‘There isn’t anyone else.’

‘There’s Lawrence Fisher.’

‘If you spoke to him, you know he won’t do it. I already asked.’

‘I wasn’t the first choice then?’

I ignored the jibe. ‘Just take a look at what we’ve got and see if anything comes to mind, that’s all I ask.’

‘Take a look at what we’ve got? What happened to the I don’t work in law enforcement any more act?’

‘It died with Mary Lynch on the canal,’ I said, ‘with a cord round its neck and the blood vessels bursting in its eyes.’

Cheap shot, but it worked. Tillman paused and looked into the distance. The picture was in his head, where I wanted it.

‘You know, years ago I had the choice between psychology and medieval French literature,’ he said at last. ‘If I’d taken the latter, I’d probably be a professor now, thinking beautiful French thoughts, taking long vacations in Rouen, Chartres, Montmartre, calling it work. But I got it into my head that psychology would make me more attractive to women. Look where I am now. Head full of serial killers.’

‘At least it’s some use,’ I said. ‘More useful than another book on medieval French.’

‘You reckon? At least I could sleep nights if I’d stuck to French poetry.’ He stopped and rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, I don’t know why I’m saying this, but if you’re so convinced it’s not Ed Fagan who killed your Mary Lynch, and you wouldn’t be after a profile from me if you weren’t, then I’ll take a look. Send round what you’ve got, and I’ll see if anything comes to mind.’

‘I’ll do that. And why don’t you come along to the crime team meeting tomorrow morning? I could pick you up beforehand and after it we could run out to the scene.’

He nodded.

‘And Mort?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I won’t forget this.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some calls.’

‘I thought you had a meeting?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t say what day.’

I smiled, then swore softly as a call came through on my cellphone. I checked the number first as usual. It was Fitzgerald.

‘Wait there,’ I said, ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

I backed away a few steps and pressed to answer.